A $35,000 Gift Via Text! How to Tap Americans’ Love Affair With Phones

So many communications channels, so little time. That is the quandary fundraisers face when deciding if they should send text messages to potential donors.

But there are many reasons to text, experts say.

“Text message is simple, straightforward, and real time,” says Wenhong Chen, author of a seminal paper on “Mobile Donation in America,” and professor of media studies and sociology at the University of Texas at Austin.

Fundraising consultants say one reason text works well is Americans’ love affair with their phones. Ninety-eight percent of Americans have a cellphone, according to a 2024 Pew Research Center survey. Another recent survey found Americans check their phones 205 times a day. Seventy-four percent of people read every text they get, one report found, and the “open rate” for texts is consistently well over 90 percent.

“We like to say we meet people where they are,” says Summer Parrish, director for individual giving at the National Alliance on Mental Illness. “People are on their phones, and we want to engage with them there.”

Other fundraisers are also taking note. Adoption of text messaging in fundraising campaigns “is at a much, much steadier pace now than it was two or three years ago,” says Jenn Thompson, a senior vice president at RKD Group, a national marketing and fundraising firm that focuses on nonprofits.

Many fundraisers are still trying to determine the right volume of texting, she says, and where it fits in the communications mix. But many nonprofits are interested in trying it, she says, and once they see the results, they add it to more campaigns.

Experimentation with texts takes multiple paths. Some try it out first with cultivation and stewardship, then graduate to direct asks. Others start out using it with direct asks — a first move some consultants believe is a mistake — or timely nudges in the midst of larger campaigns, then broaden out to year-round use in editorial contexts. Human-services organizations use it to update donors on efforts to reach their target population, and public television stations use it to point to enterprise reporting they feel justifies continued support.

NAMI made its first ever text campaign in May during Mental Health Awareness month, with links to resources and a reminder about its helpline. “We got an overwhelmingly positive response,” says Parrish, who adds that she seeks to build community, not just raise money.

Whatever the approach, it’s important to treat text as a new communications channel, not just a different place to ask for gifts, says Amber Boozan, a marketing strategist for WRLN, a public radio and television station in South Florida.

The Evolution of Text

Many fundraisers began to pay attention to texting when they witnessed the response to a campaign after the 2010 Haiti earthquake. The Red Cross raised $22 million in a week from $10 text-message donations. Since then, the urgency of disasters — floods, fires, hurricanes, winter cold spells — makes it an area where text shines. The timeliness of text also plays well to sudden increases in need: a food bank pressed to keep up with demand, or an animal shelter running out of room. But the experts the Chronicle spoke with say any activity with a deadline — year-end campaigns, Giving Tuesday, Make-a-Will Month (August), surveys, an expiring match, the need to register for a forthcoming event — regularly fare well by using text.

Boozan says she has gotten really strong responses from texts to donors that they get on the same day they make a gift. The messages are personalized with the donor’s name and include a video of the station’s staff saying a warm “thank you.”

Texts in multi-channel campaigns can support other communication modes, stresses David Sachetti, associate vice president for client strategy at AGP, a marketing company that supports nonprofits. He’s had clients send “watch your mailbox” texts, for example, to support direct mail, with messaging along the lines of “Expect an important letter soon from our CEO. Please take a look at it, and we’re hoping you can participate.”

In testing, he says, people who have gotten such texts are more likely to give and make higher gifts than those who don’t get the texts.

The supportive role that text plays in larger campaigns can make estimates of return on investment hard to come by. “The line has become very blurry now,” says Chen, at the University of Texas at Austin.

Texts’ major advantage is low cost, with a range of 10 cents to 30 cents per text, according to marketing companies. Larger donor lists can bring economies of scale. Nonprofits can cut costs, if necessary, by not texting lapsed donors or by only sending messages to donors who have given above a specific amount.

When it comes to return on investment, consultants give ranges of four dollars to fifteen dollars back for every marketing dollar spent. Sachetti believes text drives one of the highest ROIs, if not the highest ROI, when compared with other channels in fundraising campaigns.

While average gifts from text campaigns tend to be under $150, consultants say they have seen $20,000 and $35,000 gifts come in by text. Conversion rates — the share of those people who get an “ask” text and respond with a gift — are typically under 2 percent.

But even fundraisers caution against only judging the return on text financially. Other measures of engagement, such as the share of people opting out, and how texts support a larger campaign, are important to keep an eye on, they say.

Customizing Content

All fundraising messaging should be customized for text. “You can’t just plop copy from your email or your direct-mail piece into a text message,” Sachetti says. “It doesn’t resonate as well. It doesn’t fit as well. It’s got to be short, to the point, but it has to be informal and personal.”

He advises having the text come from a person, not the organization.

Katie Damico, vice president of media and digital operations at TrueSense Marketing, has similar advice, suggesting that texts be conversational, friendly, and uplifting. When setting up a texting program, she recommends that organizations choose someone at their organization to be the nonprofit’s voice, someone prospective donors might be able to reach if they decided to call. “Authentic is really the key word,” she says. “We don’t want it to sound like it’s coming from a bot.”

She prepares her clients for two-way text conversations. Prospective donors may text back with questions, so answers should be prepared similar to those in the “frequently asked question” format of websites. When a question comes that doesn’t have a ready answer, someone should be responsible for getting a speedy answer out, she says.

Timing is also important. “We shy away from cold messaging to audiences that aren’t expecting it,” she says. “We look for the logical reason why that donor is hearing from that organization at that moment. So tying it to recent giving or recent activity is really important.” Texts should also make it clear that those who don’t want texts can opt out, she says.

When it comes to using images, the marketing advice for texting now sounds similar to the early days of social media when many consultants advised to never post without a photo or a graphic. Sachetti encourages inserting two images in texts: an organizational logo and a photo or graphic. Others use the formula of an image or a video and some copy, with a link in the copy leading to a donation page on the organization’s website.

Consultants say organizations shouldn’t shy away from emojis — paw prints for animal-care organizations, for instance. In that same context, Damico says, “You can’t send too many cute pictures of cats and dogs.”

Speaking to Different Audiences

As organizations seek to personalize texts, they find it useful to segment their lists. Campaigns can be designed to onboard new donors, lure back lapsed donors, or urge existing monthly donors to increase their gifts. Marketers say donors who have previously given through a digital channel, such as social media or a website, are more likely to respond to fundraising texts.

Sometimes segmentation can yield surprising new information. In a test of texting the volunteers of a client, Thompson at RKD Group says the client found that volunteers who had put in four hours or less were more likely to donate than those who had volunteered more than that. Realizing that new volunteers are also likely donors was useful, she says.

One common fear that donors might have about the use of texts in fundraising is that they will get bombarded. But that does not appear to be likely. Thompson says most of her clients send out texts only four to eight times a year. Other consultants say that on occasion multiple texts might be sent out in a single campaign, but once a month or once a quarter are the more usual rhythms.

The Food Bank for NYC uses texts in campaigns that seek to stand out from classic fundraising times, such as GivingTuesday. The food bank has campaigns every fifth Friday, labeled “Five Borough Fridays,” since the organization serves all five of New York City’s boroughs. The food bank solicits matches from individual donors and corporations for those campaigns, and the donors get branding in the text messages.

The food bank took advantage of the quick turnaround time that text messaging offers before the 2024 World Series, when the Yankees were pitted against the Los Angeles Dodgers. The food bank set up a fundraising challenge with a Los Angeles food bank to see which organization could raise the most money. The Yankees lost in the World Series: the Food Bank for NYC won in the fundraising challenge.

The Future of Text

Texting while fundraising has plenty of common pitfalls. “It’s easy for it to feel really canned and for it to feel impersonal,” Damico says. She recently got a five-paragraph text from a politician running for office in a place she doesn’t live.

“We have to be careful that texting doesn’t become similar to where we landed with email,” says Sachetti, “which is that it becomes so ubiquitous that it doesn’t stand out.”

As texting evolves, marketers expect more videos to be used, more sophisticated segmentation of lists and — they hope — better integration of texting lists with the databases that track donor information.

Texting has risks, fundraisers say, but the biggest risk may be to not use it all. Boozan gave a presentation at a recent conference on revenue generation and marketing for public broadcasters. “I told every station sitting there, if you’re not texting, when you get home, start a text-messaging campaign.”